


A Murder

by starcrossedgirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-28
Updated: 2012-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 06:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starcrossedgirl/pseuds/starcrossedgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: crow/tea/dragon</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Murder

_Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus_ , the school motto goes. Sage advice, but Minerva has always been Gryffindor; even seasoned by age, she sometimes finds the temptation too great. 

The first time she tickles the dragon, just weeks after it has newly arrived, it breathes fire. 

“I don’t require _assistance_ ,” it roars. “How hard can it be, to handle a bunch of simpering dimwits?”

Minerva smiles at the door, slammed in her face. The dragon is young, yet, barely mature. In time, it will see. 

Mere weeks later, and it’s perched in the staff room, guarding an explosion of parchment, red quill in its claw. The air around it crackles with sparks; all the other teachers stay clear. Minerva, though, sees the droop of its shoulders, the bowed line of its spine. 

“It will go faster,” she says, “if you mark by a scheme. Make a list of core concepts you want them to mention and keep it next to the essay as a reference guide. That way you can tick them off as you work your way through, and assign grades based on how many they referenced.”

The dragon glares at her, hotly, as though it’s about to explode. But in the end it only puffs smoke from its nostrils, gathers its parchments and swoops from the room. Minerva watches it fly, sees its tough scales, hiding the softness inside. 

Slowly, gradually, it lets her move closer. She’s always aware of the danger, when she is within its firing line, but she doesn’t fear being singed. The dragon, for its part, seems to respect that. Still, it’s months, long months later, until it first comes to her office, until it first lifts its wing -- just a fraction -- revealing frail webs of veins, which hide underneath. 

“They get _homesick_ ,” it thunders. “They sniffle, they cry. They come to my office, at night, when they should be in bed, looking for --” It cuts itself off. Its wings flap once, in a flurry of air, then wrap tight round its body. Its next words waft softly towards her in soot-covered fumes: “I never know what to do.”

Minerva strains the darjeeling. “I make them tea,” she says. She pours the amber liquid into china, then pushes the cup across the table, within reach of its claw. 

The dragon’s eyes narrow, dangerously. “I’m hardly a child.”

She smiles over the rim of her cup. “Of course not, Severus,” she says. 

Taming a dragon is a task never complete. She always meets fire with fire, when a situation calls for it, but it is years until she trusts that she can tickle the dragon in jest, without being burnt to a cinder. It is worth it, however, for a dragon is a formidable ally. It is worth it for knowing how fiercely it guards all its eggs, buried deep underground, for seeing that brief glimpse of triumph in its features, when it watches them hatch, grow and finally fly. 

Minerva is rarely mistaken. So on the night that Dumbledore falls, she sits in her room and she laughs and she laughs and she laughs. She cannot cry. Because for years, she was so keen on taming a dragon that she missed seeing the span of its wings was far smaller; she missed seeing it had no scales but black feathers, missed the sharp peck of its beak. 

She understands, now. For years she thought she was taming a dragon, and yet -- it was always a crow.


End file.
